DESISTFILM’S TOP 50 FILMS OF ALL TIME

This entry was posted on October 9th, 2012

Sans Soleil

To make a list about the best films of all time is in some cases, an exhumation process: Hidden films, which we have to give a breath of life. In other cases, is a process of vindicating the old glories under the guilty or aesthetic pleasure. In Desistfilm we’ve made a commitment to examine our sensibilities in depth, and built our own sentimental canon: Films without which we couldn’t translate a part of the world.

My list is idiosyncratic, and I make no pretense of appealing to any broader standard than whatever goes into forming my taste. A statement which may be heretical: I’m not a true cinephile; I’m very interested in post-cinematic affect and stylistics.

These films are not in order; I can’t possibly rank them. Also, there are more than 50!

Note: my favorite director is Rainer Werner Fassbinder, hands-down.

Shock Corridor, Sam Fuller

The Naked Kiss, Sam Fuller

Poil de Carotte, Jacques Duvivier (sound version)

Panique, Jacques Duvivier

White Nights, Luchino Visconti

Whity, Fassbinder

Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder

L’innocente, Visconti

The Death of Maria Malibran, Werner Schroeter

Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia, Ottinger

Bildnis einer Trinkerin, Ottinger

Palermo Oder Wolfsburg, Schroeter

A Man Escaped, Bresson

Rose Hobart, Joseph Cornell

35 Rhums, Denis

Outrage, Lupino

Craig’s Wife, Arzner

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, Robert Siodmak

Safe, Todd Haynes

Poison, Todd Haynes

Superstar, Haynes

Imitation of Life, Sirk

Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien

Invisible Adversaries, Valie Export

A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang

Bullet in the Head, John Woo

Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich

Wanda, Barbara Loden

The Reckless Moment, Ophuls

The Earrings of Madame De. . ., Ophuls

Rocco e i suoi Fratelli, Visconti

Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis

Sweetie, Jane Campion

Vampyr, Carl Dreyer

M, Fritz Lang

Mouchette, Bresson

Golden Eighties, Chantal Akerman

Seven Women, Seven Sins (esp. Greed and Pride), various directors

Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay

Small Deaths, Lynne Ramsay

Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt

On Dangerous Ground, Nicholas Ray

Fox and his Friends, Fassbinder

Veronika Voss, Fassbinder

Schlußakkord, Douglas Sirk (Detlef Sierck)

Blue Steel, Kathryn Bigelow

The Loveless, Kathryn Bigelow

Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow

White Dog, Sam Fuller

Plaff! Juan Carlos Tabío

The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke

Shadows, John Cassavetes

Opening Night, Cassavetes

Gertrud, Dreyer

Á Nos Amours

Adrian MartinEditorial Committee

Amusingly enough, this opportunity to beef up my 2012 list for the Sight and Sound poll allows me to unleash my old-school-cinephile side, which I repressed for the sake of a humble intervention into contemporary canon-formation: I’m referring to those classic French and American auteurs who I really think are great. But the magic number of 50, while again arbitrary and frustrating (we all need 1000 slots, like Jonathan Rosenbaum!), also allows me to gain back more Asian cinema, more women, more experimental work, more comedy, and (one of the saddest victims of the canon process) some non-feature-length films. It also results in a list that, I am happy to say, doesn’t look wholly like (as so many canon lists these days do) an advertisement for Criterion DVD!.

À nos amours (Pialat)

Alumbramiento (Erice)

Angel Face (Preminger)

Anna (Alberto Grifi/Massimo Sarchielli)

Artists and Models (Tashlin)

Bande à part (Godard)

Behindert (Dwoskin)

By the Bluest of Seas (Boris Barnet/S. Mardanin)

Capitalism: Child Labor (Ken Jacobs)

Certified Copy (Kiarostami)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (Varda)

Le départ (Skolimowski)

L’eclisse (Antonioni)

L’enfant secret (Garrel)

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Hughes)

Floating Clouds (Naruse)

F for Fake (Welles)

Gare du nord (Rouch)

I Was Born, But … (Ozu)

The Ladies’ Man (Jerry Lewis)

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls)

Love Streams (Cassavetes)

La maman et la putain (Eustache)

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Sturges)

Mirror (Tarkovsky)

The Naked Kiss (Fuller)

Notorious (Hitchcock)

Nuit et jour (Akerman)

Once Upon a Time in America (Leone)

Outer Space (Tscherkassky)

Partie de campagne (Renoir)

Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway)

Rio Bravo (Hawks)

Rosetta (Dardennes)

Scarlet Street (Lang)

Seven Women (Ford)

Smiley Face (Araki)

Stars in My Crown (Tourneur)

Sunrise (Murnau)

The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)

The River (Tsai)

The Smiling Lieutenant (Lubitsch)

The Tom Blair Trilogy: Last Chants for a Slow Dance / Sure Fire / The Bed You Sleep In (Jon Jost)

As a consequence of the Sight & Sound Poll, I choose to mention only contemporary films, made between 2000 and 2012. These decade/years were amazingly rich, flourishing, explosive in terms of creation and experiments, as were the 1890s and the 1920s, 1960s, 1970s. At the same time, I’m feeling it’s more and more difficult for the artists to be recognized “in real time”, especially of course when they are young and coming from non-western countries. Of course I could provide a list of 50X2 films, as there is so many magnificent works coming from everywhere.

Note: Striking at the heart of the matter, often political, sexual, exploratory in nature, the selection is a peek into possibilities of defining elements of Cinema. What moves, excites, provokes, and makes one fall in love with life, people; films that are accessible, deep, and memorable – images that stay, fumble, segue into each other, making meaning of their own, often. Sometimes watching these films is a blurr – a melting point, a suspension of all sensations, dancing in a colloquium – ménage a cinquante and counting.

Making a list gives you nothing but tears. Making a list gives you nothing but the words ‘but’ , that go on infinitely .I would have loved to see Bergman or Antonioni or Tarkovsky on the list, but the phantom of unknown cinema haunted me to drag the classics out of the list. But what does the ‘Classics’ truly mean?. If Fellini was onewhy Bresson not?. So it’s just an exception of an exception of an exception. It’s like you have to summarize the whole universe into fifty lines .The condition of choosing was nothing but an injustice of your taste against world taste, your intellectual wannabe against your true faith in cinema , your own vision against the ‘against world vision’ . So this list was nothing but…. nothing.

Evolution of a Fillipino Family (Lav Diaz/2004/Phillipines)

Burden of the Beast (Paisit Panpreugsachart/2004/Thai)

A Time To Live , A Time To Die (Hou Hsiao Hsien/1985/Taiwan)

India Song (Marguerite Duras/1975/Fr)

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul/2004/Thai)

Handle Me With Care (Kongdej Jaturanrassamee/2008/Thai)

My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant/1991/US)

The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson/1977/Fr) 9.Jonas Will be 25 In A Year 2000 (Alain Tanner/1976/Switzerland)

Punishment Park (Peter Watkins/1971/UK)

The Garden (Jan Svankmajer/1968/Czech)

Barren Illusions (Kiyoshi Kurosawa/1999/Jp)

Manila by night (Ishmael Bernal /1980/Philippines )

Here and Elsewhere (Jean Luc Godard/1976/Fr)

Platform (Jia Zhangke/2000/Chn)

Pettition (Zhao Liang/2009/Chn)

End (Artavazad Peleshyan/1994/Armenia)

Mother Kuster Goes to Heaven (Rainer Werner Fassbinder/1975/Germany)

I Can No Longer hear Your guitar anymore (Phillipe Garrel/1991/Fr)

Vagabond (Agnes Varda/1985/Fr)

Sans Soleil (Chris Marker/1983/Fr)

The Mouth Agape (Maurice Pialat/1974/Fr)

Palms (Artur Aristaksyan/1993/Russia)

Midareru (Mikio naruse/1964/Jp)

The Wild Field (Nugyen Hong Sen/1979/Vietnam)

Madamme X (Tabea Blumenschein & Ulrike Ottinger/1978/Germany)

Days of being Wild (Wong Kar Wai/1990/HK)

My Childhood ( Bill Douglas/1972/UK)

Susana (Luis Bunuel/1951/Mexico)

Imburnal (Sherad Antonio Sanchez/2008/Philippines)

Five (Abbas Kiarostami/2003/Iran)

Fate (Zeki Demirkubuz/2001/Turkey)

Synecdoche ,New York ( Phillip Kauffman/2008/US)

The intruder (Claire Denis/2004/Fr)

The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke/1989/Austria)

Female trouble (John Waters/1974/US)

Opening Night (John Cassavetes/1977/US)

The Cruelty of Soy Sauce Man (Paisit Panpreugsachart/2000/Thai)

Iedo Island (Kim Ki Young/1977/ST Korea)

Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel/2008/Argentina)

Still Life (Shorab Shais Salles/1974/Iran)

Sombre (Philippe Grandrieux/1998/Fr)

Shadow in paradise (Aki Kaurismaki/1986/Finland)

Bones (Pedro Costa/1997/Portugal)

Man With No Name (Wang Bing/2009/CHN)

Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog/1971/Germany)

The Camera Man (Buster Keaton /1928/US)

The Garden (Derek Jarman/1990/UK)

Lifeline (Victor Erice/2002/Spain)

Black Girl (Ousmane Sambene/1966/Senegal)

Birth of Seanema (Sasithorn Ariyavicha/2004/Thai)

Le Livre de Marie/Je Vous Salue Marie

Lauren BlissStaff Writer

Chaos Theory:
50 Films

Cinema, as Jean Epstein teaches us, “mobilizes spatial relations”. What might this mean, then, to write a list of fifty films which have impressed me most, seeing as I align myself with Epstein when he writes that in the cinema “solids find their supremacy threatened”. Lists will of course change, but this is not only due to tastes changing; but to the nature of the cinema itself. It is an “inconstant, inconsistent, fluid”1. To my mind, locking in a series of films I consider to be the ‘greatest’ can only do an injustice to cinema. Therefore, to link the spirit of Epstein with the spirit of lists, I offer 50 films, in no particular order, from my recent memory, which have surprised and sometimes horrified me with their geometrical abstraction of love, politics and the body.